W or The Memory of Childhood

W consists of two parallel tales Perec s disturbing account of his wartime childhood is interspersed with the surreal tale of W., an island state based on the rules of sport. In the fictional narrative a man adopts the identity of one Gaspard Winckler. When he undertakes a journey in search of the real Winckler and his fate, he leads the reader into the descriptions of the island-state where citizens are forced to compete in athletic competitions for the basics of life. Intertwined with the fictional narrative are Perec s stories of his past his father s death in the French army, his mother s transportation to Auschwitz, his own upbringing with relatives and his attempts to pin down his true memories rather than memories created for him by language, by images, by others. Fiction and autobiography interweave throughout Perec s text until, in a final chapter, the two literary categories seem to merge together.